Accessibility statement

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Accessibility statement overview

Accessibility statement for www.barnet.gov.uk and third party websites

This statement applies to Barnet Council websites and third party web applications and websites

This website is run by London Borough of Barnet.

We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • zoom in up to 400% without the text spilling off the screen
  • navigate most of the website using just a keyboard                          
  • navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
  • listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

How accessible is this website

This website is fully accessible with the following exceptions:

  • many of our PDF, Word and Excel documents on the website don’t currently meet accessibility standards
  • some of our online forms provided by third parties do not provide a visible focus
  • link text to external websites may not resize correctly on some mobile devices

Fully compliant sites

The following Barnet sites are fully compliant:

Fully compliant third-party sites:

Third-party sites that have their own fully compliant accessibility statements:

Partially compliant sites

We are working with the providers of these sites to ensure full compliance:

The following third-party sites have their own partially compliant accessibility statements:

Third party websites that are not compliant

We are currently working with the suppliers of the following sites to ensure their compliance:

What to do if you can’t access parts of this website

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille email webmaster@barnet.gov.uk.

We’ll consider your request and get back to you.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website.

If you find any problems that aren’t listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact: webmaster@barnet.gov.uk.

Enforcement procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the ‘accessibility regulations’).

If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

Hearing loops are available in our reception areas.  Find out how to contact us

Contact us using our video British Sign Language interpretation service

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

London Borough of Barnet is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

This website is compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard.

Non-accessible content

The content listed is non-accessible for the following reasons.

PDF and Word documents

Many of our PDF, Word and Excel documents don’t currently meet accessibility standards, they do not comply with WCAG 2.1 criteria 2.4.5 multiple ways.

We will be conducting a full review of our PDF estate within the next 12 months in order to fix these issues.

Resizing of links on mobile devices

Link text to external websites may not resize correctly on some mobile devices.

This does not comply with WCAG 2.1 criteria 1.4.4 Resize text.

We are working with our design agency to fix this by end of 2022.

Disproportionate burden

Online tools and transactions

Some of our online tools and transactions are built and hosted through third-party software and made to look like our website. Some of these do not meet WCAG 2.1 accessibility guidelines.

We are currently in the process of assessing the complexity and costs of fixing the issues with our third-party providers. We will publish our road map. We will update this as we identify and assess the issues.

We will also publish any assessment if we claim there is a disproportionate burden.

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

PDF and other documents

Some of our PDF, Word and Excel documents are essential to providing our services.

For example, we have PDF documents with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word documents. We plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

Many of our older PDF, Word and Excel documents don’t meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value).

The accessibility regulations don’t require us to fix PDF or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services.

How we tested this website

This website was fully tested on 29 September 2020.

The test was carried out by London Borough of Barnet Digital Web team using the SiteImprove tool and the Axe tool.

We tested our main website platform, available at www.barnet.gov.uk

Ongoing testing of our website

We use an automated accessibility checker, Silktide. This tool is used to check the accessibility of our website every week.

We are using Silktide to help us with our PDF accessibility work.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We are working on an accessibility roadmap. This will show how and when we plan to improve on the accessibility of  this website.

This statement was prepared on 1 September 2019.

It was last updated on 24 November 2022.